


I Am the Fire and I Am the Forest

by heartofthesunrise



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Zayn Leaves One Direction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-10-31 22:18:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17858015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofthesunrise/pseuds/heartofthesunrise
Summary: For the prompt "Things you said with too many miles between us" on tumblr. Or, Zayn decides to quit the band.





	I Am the Fire and I Am the Forest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexenglish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexenglish/gifts).



> Rebloggable [here.](https://warpedtourniall.tumblr.com/post/178806335876/15-ziall)

Zayn’s been having the “nut up and leave the band” conversation with himself for about six months and it never quite seems to take. It’ll be after a rehearsal, or in the car being shuttled between promo events, just him and the lads, and he’ll have it all planned out: he’ll tell them how run down he is; they’ll understand; he’ll still be in their lives, just in a different way. He’s got a dozen potential scripts for exactly where to start.

And then just as he’s taking a breath to speak, something will happen: Liam will tackle Louis to the floor, laughing madly, and Zayn will be struck by how much they used to hate each other and his heart will go all tender for them; Harry will surprise them all by looking up from his phone and telling one of his endless, meandering knock knock jokes; Niall will reach across the car to bump his knuckles just under Zayn’s chin, and give him one of those gut-rot sweet smiles that he seems to save up for when Zayn needs them, and Zayn… Well he won’t want to stay in the band, really, but he’ll want to want to.

It had been enough to want to want to, for a while.

So this drive to get out has been closing around him like a fist, like when he moves or breathes he can feel its edges drawing closer and closer. And it was stupid, not to say anything before now, but at first he thought… It had been stupid, really stupid. He’d just hoped, the way a dog hopes it’ll be fed, that if he just waited long enough somebody would notice his needs and relieve him. Somebody from management would look at Zayn and see the gaunt, bruised face Zayn sees when he can’t avoid a mirror and they’d put him out to pasture, send him to the farm where retired boyband members go to live out the rest of their days in peace. He could make friends with Chris Kirkpatrick, or like… Peter Tork.

It hasn’t happened yet.

So Zayn waits, and he tries not to squirm because this need to get out is one of those dime-store finger traps where the more you struggle the tighter it goes. Maybe he can’t blame anybody for not noticing how miserable he is.

At the end of tour they’re all sat in Harry’s hotel room with a gratuitous amount of take-out curry on the table and Louis and Niall yelling at each other over a match on telly. Harry’s got his phone in one hand and has summoned a tumbler of whiskey from somewhere. He looks, as he always does on nights like this, effortless, tipping his chair back on two legs and frowning as he composes a caption for his Instagram.

Liam’s been asleep for about twenty minutes. Truly, the one of the lot of them who knows best how to live. Zayn’s just thinking idly how he might join him, nudge him over on Harry’s bed and just pass out next to him, when there’s a tug on the cuff of his jeans. It’s Niall, not even looking at him, just reaching back from where he’s sprawled on the floor to check in with him. Zayn takes a steadying breath.

“Y’alright, Zayner?” Niall does look back then, his expressive mouth twisted to one side, both eyebrows up. “Look tired.”

Zayn needs to get out of this band or he’s going to die. It is a complete surety. He has never felt a conviction so strongly in his life, and the urge to say it, now, to go wake Liam up and gather them together and just tell them is almost gagging him.

“‘M good,” he says instead. He should eat something. He should try to sleep this off. “Thanks, though.”

Niall looks doubtfully at him. “‘Kay,” he says finally, and turns back to the match, but keeps his hand just on Zayn’s ankle. It’s gentle, and so tender Zayn wants to cry. Wishes it was worth it to stay here, for these people he loves so much. Knows it’s rotting him.

-

They’re three weeks into break when Zayn makes up his mind. He hasn’t left his house in days. It’s partly the cloud of paparazzi lingering on the street outside, partly the sort of delirious relief of having nothing to do and nowhere to go, at least for the moment. That unfamiliar feeling of belonging entirely to himself.

Towards the end of tour, if he’s honest, he’d begun to doubt his own existence. He was a body, a vessel for a voice, and the people in charge of him kept him in repair and placed him onstage and brought him off again. And whatever bright thing that had once inhabited him, illuminated him from within to make him as animate and real as Harry, or Liam, had been taken out for repairs and misplaced somewhere. He was a bottle of wine, but he had been uncorked and emptied out, so the wind could blow across him, and he could sing.

His phone vibrates dully on the bedside table.

Zayn puts on Netflix in the background - it’s whatever Safaa had been watching last, he guesses, halfway through an episode of Orange is the New Black. He hasn’t seen the rest of it, doesn’t know the context, but having noise in the apartment is a relief regardless.

His phone vibrates again, not just the percussive blip of a text message, but a series of Morse code-like bleats that mean somebody’s actually trying to call him. A publicist, or a label representative - somebody who needs him to have an opinion on a subject he couldn’t care less about, fragrance marketing or magazine covers or promo for the album. 

He leans up and checks the call ID anyway, and is startled to find it’s later than he’d realized - after ten, already - and that the call isn’t from anyone who could possibly want anything from him. Nothing he wouldn’t willingly part with, anyway. 

“Niall,” he says into the receiver. He hasn’t spoken all day, it feels like. His voice takes coaxing to form the words. “Y’alright?” 

“Zaaayn,” Niall says. He’s got that over-bright burr in his voice that means he’s drunk, and pleased about it. There’s the unmistakable noise of a well-populated pub behind him. “Not been answering my texts, Zayn.” 

It’s true: Niall’s sent him his typical smattering of life updates - photos of the new driving gloves he’s bought himself, a blurry selfie with Bobby, stories about the Mullingar crowd reconvening for the holidays. Louis’ birthday has come and gone. Zayn’s, next week, draws up around his neck like a noose. 

“Been busy,” Zayn says lamely. He can almost hear Niall hand-waving it away. 

“Busy, busy,” he says. “Listen, d’you have birthday plans? ‘Cos I thought you could come out here, y’know, fresh air and all that.” 

There’s a noisy rustle that makes Zayn tilt the phone away from his ear, it’s so sharp. He can hear Niall breathing as he moves about, phone still pressed to the side of his face. The pub noise falls away, replaced by the staticky sound of a breeze against the receiver. Niall must’ve stepped outside. He’s probably not even wearing a coat, probably hasn’t noticed it’s winter no matter how drunk you are. 

“Niall,” Zayn says. “You’ll catch cold.” 

Niall laughs his hyena laugh and Zayn can imagine him on some twilit street in Ireland, his head thrown back so his throat bobs in the moonlight. The way his pale eyelashes flutter when he’s had too much to drink, and how his face goes ruddy and tempting. 

“That’s not an answer,” Niall says, finally. How he always can cut right to the point with Zayn, even when he’s raucous and drunk, even when there’s naught but a phone line threading them together over the expanse of the Irish sea. 

“I know,” Zayn says. He doesn’t have it in him, just now, to lie to Niall. It’s impossible to lie to any of them, really, but it pains him with Niall most of all. Niall, who values honesty in his friends over any other quality. Niall, who can be so guarded, still, that meeting him halfway requires a certain kind of radical honesty that Zayn craves and fears in equal measure. 

“You’re not doing well,” Niall says finally. It lances through Zayn. The relief he feels is enormous and terrifying. If Niall knows… this is the endgame, isn’t it. He’ll either have to change or leave, and he’s known for months now that only one of those is a real solution. “I wanted to say something sooner,” Niall continues, his giddy drunk voice being subsumed by his quieter, more thoughtful one. “I didn’t, like… I thought I was letting you work up to it, but.” 

“I’m sorry,” Zayn says. It’s not going to change anything - no matter what he does, how long he forces himself to stay, it’s still going to bring down hell on the lot of them. They’d been so young, signing contracts without building in emergency exits. He won’t be free of this for years. 

None of them will. 

“Zayn,” Niall says again, quieter. He could be beside Zayn in the bed, his voice is so soft. It makes Zayn turn onto his back and remember, when they were first starting out, how he used to wake up with Niall wrapped around him like a sloth, a column of heat all along the side of him. How they’d clung together for wont of any other comforts. 

How he’d used to think about waking Niall up with a kiss, or a caress to the side of his face, before the lumbering machine of their careers had carried them further apart and made thoughts like that seem ludicrous. 

“I love you,” Zayn says, because it seems important. “Go inside, you must be freezing.” 

“Don’t -” Niall says, and Zayn sighs into the phone, a gust of static. 

“We’ll talk, okay?” he says, and he hears the rustle of Niall nodding against the phone, forgetting, for a moment, that they can’t see one another. 

Maybe they will. More likely, they won’t. Zayn rings off and plugs his phone in before setting it to do not disturb. He wonders if he’s going to die in this band.


End file.
